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You seem to be talking about how to analyze a book's merits. That's a twofold process: understanding your personal taste and evaluating the book's merits. For both, you need a framework. I hope these will suffice: A Categorization System for Taste: Beyond Genres Taste can be a nebulous thing. Sometimes we don't even know why a book, movie, or thing strikes our fancy. I don't pretend to understand taste completely, but this framework has helped me give some method to the madness. *'World-driven': the world becomes the book's main attraction. Authors usually spend pages and pages detailing the nooks and crannies of this new, foreign world. The world determines the plot and characters, not the other way around. *'Plot-driven:' the plot captivates and captures the reader. Some strange sequence of events propel the characters towards the climax. *'Character-driven': the character--his or her development, actions, reactions--is the novel. The world and plot become secondary to the intimate study of people.1 *'Language-driven': these types of books are more conceptual, and in many ways, harder to define. The author is trying to play with the idea of structure and language themselves. This type of book is usually only found in literary fiction, and is a rare breed at that. 2 This categorization ignores genres because, oftentimes, genre alone isn't what truly attracts us to a book. Of course, certain categories are more popular in some traditional genres (e.g. world-driven in science fiction, and character-driven in romances). With general fiction, things get all muddled. One category isn't better than the others. They simply illustrate different emphases and preferences. Some people love the detailed ambiance of a world-driven book; others will get sick and tired of the tedious description of trains and dogs who talk. Like they away, there's no accounting for taste. Analyzing the Merits: Breaking it Down Even after you understand your taste (and others' taste), you still can't analyze the nuts and bolts of a book's merits. Hence, we have yet another analytical framework. Whenever I'm thinking about a book's merits, I look at four aspects of the book: *'Prose': by its very nature, a novel is a collection of words strung together. Some writers can write many pretty sentences. Others just view writing as a way to deliver their ideas, giving the reader serviceable prose. Still others' writing detracts from the story. *'Characters:' most novels have characters who move the plot (or the plot moves them). Think about how interesting and unique they are. Some of them will be fascinating while others will be flat stock characters. *'Storylines' - things (supposedly) happen in books. Some books have more interesting things happen than others. *'World'-every novel, regardless of genre, takes place in a fictional universe, regardless of how realistic it seems. Some writers can craft the backdrops with haunting precision and others don't care much at all. *'Themes - '''themes are about ''something--some abstract ideas--however trivial it may be. Some novels tackle powerful themes like the human condition, death, and inequality. Others talk about purses and inferiority complexes. Whatever the themes are, they're there. No single metric makes or breaks a novel. A book can have stunning story lines, wonderful characters, but mediocre writing--which doesn't make it a bad book. Moreover, a book can have great prose that pushes the boundaries of the English language and a storyline that'll put an insomniac to sleep. It'd be silly to consider this framework in isolation, without thinking about the category of taste. A world-driven book with a shitty world isn't much of a boo, is it? On the other hand, a world-driven book with somewhat bland characters can be a pretty good book if the world-building is done really well. (Think Murakami.) It's important to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a book, then make your judgment. Don't be ashamed of your taste, but understand that it's not the be-all and end-all. Your taste is yours. You shouldn't be ashamed of it. If you like exciting, fast-paced plots--bully for you! Embrace your taste and read within your "taste category." But realize that not everyone has the same taste as you. (Fools they may be, but they have a right tot their foolishness...just like you do.) Most books have some kind of merit to someone in the world. It's a matter of understanding whom a book will appeal to: world-driven people who like prose, perhaps. For example, I'd say that Fifty Shades of Grey is for people who like character-driven books, but also like the themes of BDSM (titillating) and fairy tales. Fifty Shades, however, is really not for someone who puts any kind of emphasis in prose and good character development. Just...no. Understanding and analyzing books are about developing a framework so you can (pretend to) objectively assess a book's merits. __________ 1: Beyond Genres: Character, Plot and World-Driven Stories 2: This category isn't in my original list, but after some thought and discussion from others, I've decided to include it. It's a pretty small category and rarely found in popular fiction. A potential example would be Jorge Borges' works.